Blog

By Tom Uehling, Senior Technical Writer
April 25, 2012

When I begin research for an upcoming purchase decision, I am often reminded of a scene from the 1984 movie Moscow on the Hudson. In the scene, Vladimir Ivanoff, a Russian played by Robin Williams, goes to a US grocery store to purchase coffee. He asks for directions to the "coffee line" and is told the coffee is in isle two and that there is no line. When he reaches isle two, Ivanoff sees row after row of coffee and reads the various brands with increasing emotion. As he reaches sensory overload, he starts repeating "coffee, coffee, coffee!" and finally drops to the floor.

This is how I feel when purchasing a new vehicle, computer, or anything else that requires more than a simple yes/no answer. While Ivanoff's overload might have been due to euphoria, my overload stems from simply having too many choices. I am appreciative of salespeople who assist me in filtering out the products and options I don't need based on how I will be using the product. When I buy a new vehicle for example, I know I will be driving on steep snow-covered hills part of the year, occasionally towing a boat, and commuting to work. Based on this analysis, the list of products that meets my needs is, to my relief, filtered down to three or four models that have all-wheel drive, a towing package and reasonable gas mileage.

While my example is simple, the same concept can be extended to selling and buying complex items such as aircraft, insurance, computer networks and commercial vehicles. Ultimately the goal is to quickly guide the customer to the products and services that best meet the customer's needs. It begins with asking the right questions and filtering the products based on the responses. This eliminates customer frustration, speeds the sales process, and improves customer satisfaction.

Most salespeople understand this and make an effort to ask questions that determine what...

by John Flanders
Inside Sales & Market Development

It’s amazing how fast the way we all do business changes on a daily basis. A few years ago we were driving around with large briefcases and laptops, now we’ve got iPads or some other mobile device. We once had to be hardwired to access our emails, and now 35% of us are checking emails from our mobile device after waking up in the morning, before anything else.

In the same way, CPQ solutions used to be purely geared toward the manufacturing industry. Today, FPX has customers utilizing our solution to price and approve insurance policies, while others can configure a security solution in the middle of nowhere from any mobile device, not just an iPad.

This proves my initial point. The business world we work in and the tools we use to manage it are constantly changing. So don’t think of CPQ as a tool for manufacturers. CPQ has evolved to increase sales effectiveness for those selling financial services, insurance, and many other types of services.

For sales people in any industry, mobility is a must. They need to be able to adjust and react to their prospects and customers at a moment’s notice. Why? Because the customer expects you to! Tablets have become a huge part of our lives and research suggests that as many as 28 million of the devices could be sold in the coming months.

FPX took note of this and developed FPX CPQ OnDemand Mobile. Early on in the process, we noticed something about our own team as we sat together in a conference room.  Some had iPads, some had Droids, someone still had a Blackberry, and we all had our laptops or MacBooks.

With this in mind, FPX develops mobile solutions using HTML5.  This...

Paul Kiss, Director of Sales
April 2, 2012

To start out, I will say I am somewhat in a unique position as I write about the K.I.S.S. Principle simply because of my last name.  Keep it Simple, Stupid can sometimes be a hard principle to live by whether it be in your personal life or in your daily business grind.  If I was to survey a large sample of people and ask, would you like to live a simpler life than a more challenging one, I think the responses would be obvious…keep it simple!

What reality tells us though, life is complex; there are many challenges and busy schedules with both home and work.  Think of a typical American family of four, 2 adults and 2 children.  Likely two parents are working, and their kids are involved in almost every opportunity that presents itself whether it be sports, academics, music, or other.  Where do we have to be and when do we have to pick up?  A constant grind…pepper in the stress of the jobs, traveling around for the job, preparing meals, completing homework, grocery shopping, preparing for college, etc. etc. We find a way through these daily obstacles using the best tools we have available to us. 

If we juxtapose daily life challenges with global sales teams, there are many challenges that need to be addressed by all organizations.  Maximizing sales has to rise as one of the most critical aspects of your business.  The goal is to grow your business, to gain more market share, to build your name and brand, and consistently be profitable year after year.  This is no easy task and if you are relying on a sales team to do the job, doesn’t it make sense to give them tools to navigate this challenging landscape with ease?  As their sale manager, ask yourself these questions:

• How do they communicate with their customers/prospects,?
• Do they make it easy for...

by Neville Barber, Director of Sales, EMEA
March 26, 2012

Is selling Cloud-based solutions any different from selling on-premise software solutions 10 – 15 years ago?

Someone posted this question on a LinkedIn.com SaaS group the other day and it stopped me in my tracks. No doubt what we sell today might be different in some ways, but has my approach as a sales professional changed at all? And more importantly has the way customers buy changed?

In my on-premise life, I sold financial and database solutions. I have more recently worked for companies supplying e-commerce products, through On-Demand Customer Relationship Management software. Today my focus is on supplying FPX Configuration, including Pricing and Quotation solutions to help customers shorten the time to cash from their customers.

So has my approach changed over the last 15 years?  I am not sure it has, because I have always focused on the following important elements of the selling process:

• Provide solutions that form part of our customers interactions with their own customers.
• Help to leverage investment in CRM systems such as Salesforce.com.
• Demonstrate understanding of a customer's business...